ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has imposed a travel ban on the parliamentary leader of the opposition, Shehbaz Sharif, based on a recommendation by its anti-graft agency, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said on Monday.
The decision to place Shehbaz on the country’s Exit Control List (ECL) follows a week after he was off-loaded from a UK-bound flight, despite a top Pakistani court permitting him to travel to London for medical treatment.
In a press conference on Monday, Ahmed said that “members of the Sharif family,” who were co-accused in a money laundering case, “were already in London.”
“Nawaz Sharif did not return, so how could Shehbaz?” he added.
Shehbaz, a former chief minister of the populous Punjab province and younger brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is co-accused in a money laundering case amounting to billions of rupees.
Nawaz left Pakistan in November 2019 to seek medical treatment in the UK after being granted bail from a seven-year jail sentence for corruption. He denies the corruption charges and continues to live in exile in London.
Shehbaz, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party – after Nawaz was disqualified from office – was released on bail in April, nearly seven months after the NAB detained him over his alleged role in the money laundering case.
“Therefore, like his brother, if Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif absconds, his extradition from the UK will not be possible,” Ahmed said.
Pakistan imposes travel ban on key opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif
https://arab.news/8rk48
Pakistan imposes travel ban on key opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif
- Places him on the country’s exit control list a week after he was off-loaded from a UK-bound flight
- Court had permitted him to travel abroad for medical treatment
Hundreds of migrants, including Pakistanis, land in Greece after search operation at sea
- Rescued migrants were taken to a temporary facility on Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini
- Greece has made deportations of rejected asylum seekers a priority under its migration policy
ATHENS: Greece’s Coast Guard rescued about 540 migrants from a fishing boat off Europe’s southernmost island of Gavdos on Friday, one of the biggest groups to reach the country in recent months.
The migrants were found during a Greek search operation some 16 nautical miles (29.6 km) off Gavdos, a Coast Guard statement said. They are all well and are being taken to a temporary facility on the nearby island of Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini, a Coast Guard official said, adding most of the migrants were men from Bangladesh, Egypt and Pakistan.
In a separate incident on Thursday, the EU’s border agency Frontex rescued 65 men and five women from two migrant boats in distress off Gavdos, the Greek Coast Guard said.
Greece was on the front line of a 2015-16 migration crisis when more than a million people from the Middle East and Africa landed on its shores before moving on to other European countries, mainly Germany.
Flows have ebbed since then, but both Crete and Gavdos — the two Mediterranean islands nearest to the African coast — have seen a steep rise in migrant boats, mainly from Libya, reaching their shores over the past year and deadly accidents remain common along that route.
Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy will be eligible for help in dealing with migratory pressures under a new EU mechanism when the bloc’s pact on migration and asylum enters into force in mid-2026.
The center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said deportation of rejected asylum seekers will be a priority.
